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Directed by Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony M. Dawson) and based on the Argentinian comic book by writer Eugenio Zappietro and artist Juan Zanotto, 1983’s Yor, The Hunter From The Future stars none other than Reb Brown as the titular – and extremely blonde - barbarian. When we first meet our unusually smug hero, he’s roaming the land doing this thing when he comes across a beautiful cavewoman named Ka-Laa (Corinne Cléry) and her aged guardian Pag (Luciano Pigozzi) just as they’re attacked by a "stegoceratops!" Of course, mighty Yor saves the damsel in distress and her old friend and the three soon become fast friends as he’s brought back to their village for a celebration.

This happiness doesn’t last, however, as a rival tribe of furry, blue-skinned Neanderthals attack, poor Ka-Laa kidnapped in the process. Yor and Pag decide to save her, which is exactly what happens when Yor shoots a giant bat out of the sky and then uses its corpse as a hang glider to swoop in and save Ka-Laa for a second time. Never mind the fact that the cave is then flooded and the rest of the captives are left for dead!

From here, the three companions venture out into the land where they encounter Tarita (Marina Rocchi) and her sand people. Tarita wears a metal amulet around her neck that matches the one that Yor wears… the one that he has simply always had… he cannot remember how he got it in the first place. Yor kills a bunch of the sand people, the furry blue guys show up and kill Tarita, and then Yor saves more people from a dinosaur, at which point the three travelers are invited by that tribe to hang out for a while. When lasers blast out of the sky and destroy that village, Yor’s mysterious and forgotten past comes back to haunt him as he comes face to face with… The Overlord (John Steiner) and his army of robots!

The best movies ever made all tend to start out with a theme song describing their central character’s traits and abilities, and Yor continues that tradition in a big way. BEHOLD!

From there, we’re off and running. This movie doesn’t mess around. Yor quickly kills his first dinosaur, encouraging the tribespeople to drink the blood of their enemy as if he was offering a little kid a drink of lemonade on a hot summer day. This, obviously, endears him to Ka-Laa, who has obviously got a thing from him right from the start. Given that Yor is blonde, oily, devoid of much body hair and reasonably clean by caveman standards this isn’t surprising. Most of the other men in the movie are dirty, hairy and bearded. At any rate, this is an action film, not a romance movie, so don’t get too caught up in all of that. Bonus points for using a giant dino-bat as a hang glider and hey, how about that 180 degree turn in the last half hour that takes us straight into Star Wars territory? You’ve got to love it.

Margheriti keeps things moving at a nice pace. The action is close enough to constant that the film is never dull and while the film’s low budget is frequently obvious, sometimes painfully so, it’s got plenty of that sort of eighties B-movie charm. Reb Brown can’t act his way out of a paper bag, he spends most of the movie with an unusually goofy and entirely out of place grin on his face, but he’s still fun to watch as he smashes and punches his way through the bad guys. Corinne Cléry looks great and does a fine job of getting captured a lot and you can’t help but dig Luciano Pigozzi as the old guy that isn’t her dad but might as well be. Throw in a confused, scenery chewing, heavily made up John Steiner as the mysterious Overlord and you’ve got a pretty solid cast.

Rumor has it that this was intended to be a four-part TV mini-series and that the original cut ran two hundred minutes. That cut doesn’t ever seem to have materialized anywhere, the version of the movie on this Blu-ray runs ninety-one-minutes.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Yor arrives on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. While there’s no information here about where the transfer was sourced from, you have to wonder if a print was used. The picture is pretty soft, with fine detail definitely surpassing DVD but never raising to the best that Blu-ray can offer. Also, it’s clear that the image wasn’t restored, as there’s minor damage evident throughout the duration of the film – it’s typically just small stuff like scratches and the occasional blemish rather than anything all that distracting, but it’s definitely there. Colors are reproduced fairly well, black levels are okay – again, this is completely watchable, but keep your expectations in check, it’s hardly Blu-ray demo material.

The only audio option on the disc is an LPCM 2.0 track in English, with optional subtitles provided in English only. This track is fine. Dialogue stays pretty clear and is always easily discernable. There are no noticeable issues with any hiss or distortion to note and the levels are properly balanced. Hearing the film’s theme song in lossless is worth the price of admission alone!

Extras begin with an audio commentary with Reb Brown, who comes across as a pretty likeable guy but who really should have been sat down with a moderator for this talk as he goes quiet for long stretches and spends more time just sort of making jokes about what he sees on screen than telling us about his experiences making the film. He does make some comments here and there about how the cast all got along as family on the set, doing some of the stunts in the movie and shooting in Turkey but he doesn’t go into loads of detail here.

The disc also includes a theatrical trailer for the feature, menus and chapter selection. Additionally, it’s worth noting that Mill Creek has packaged this release with a slipcover that features artwork different than that featured on the cover sleeve.

The Final Word:

Yor – The Hunter From The Future was, is and forever shall be a whole lot of big dumb fun. It’s quickly paced, features some memorably off the wall scenes and, if nothing else, the film is ridiculously entertaining. Mill Creek’s Blu-ray release isn’t going to floor anyone, but it presents a more than watchable high definition presentation at a very fair price.

Grabbed this last night. Walmart has it in the blu ray bin. I saw this when I was a kid in a theater. Then forgot it until TCM or IFC aired a nice print of a it about 10 years ago. The Blu looks decent and was cheap.